


I Couldn't Seem to Die

by Pastel_Teacups



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/M, Han-Centric, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5694511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastel_Teacups/pseuds/Pastel_Teacups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Depression exists like black holes exist; they suck away everything, drop it into a void of certain darkness and assured death. Depression exists to kill. </i> </p><p>Or, five times Han Solo tries to kill himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Couldn't Seem to Die

The first time Han tries to kill himself, he’s eleven. 

He’s been an orphan ever since he was young, too young to remember his parent’s face, and he wasn’t all that dismal about it, really. 

But he was always so _sad_.

He could never place why, or name what it was that made him so sad, but there was always some lingering monster in the back of his head filling his mind with sorrow, with grief. 

He reads in the news that an old man in town, a man Han had passed on the street more than once, had killed himself. 

To Han, it seems like a fine idea. No more pain, no more monsters to swallow you whole with sadness. He wonders, vaguely, what it feels like. 

He doesn’t do it. He thinks about it, sits in the grubby orphanage bathroom with a dinner knife clutched in his hand, but chickens out before it can get too close to his skin. 

\----

The second time Han tries to kill himself he’s seventeen, and he can’t stand the dead orphan eyes that stick in his mind any time he tries to sleep. 

It’d been an accident. Wasn’t even his fault, really. But he had been the one to suggest a trip to town with the young boy, and he had been the one that wasn’t strong enough to pry the mugger off of him when he attacked. 

It was Han’s fault, that he died. 

This time he does take a knife to his wrist, no longer afraid of the stinging pain and the blood that dirties the small bathtub he lays in. 

However, he’d forgotten to lock the door. 

_Stupid, stupid._

Somebody bursts in, just before it all goes black. 

\----

The third time Han tries to kill himself, he’s in some grimy bar he’s just old enough to get into, and the same old scars are ripped open at the hand of a _real_ knife this time, not a flimsy dinner knife he’d stolen from the table. 

It has to work, this time. 

There are no tears. Han doesn’t cry anymore. He’s just _numb._

A figure slams the stall door open, large and furry, and though Han tries to fight it off, it lifts him up effortlessly and carries him out of the bar. 

He isn’t sure when he passed out, but when his eyes open again he’s sitting a hospital bed with bandages on his wrists greeting him like old friends.

In the chair beside him sits a Wookie, and when he notices that Han is awake he sits up a bit. 

“Who’re you?” Han asks after a moment, voice rough from lack of use. 

The Wookie offers him a glass of water, and gives him a name gruffly.

“Nice to meet you, Chewbacca. Now, why the hell wouldn’t you let me die?” He asks, looking accusatory. 

The large stranger growls out a reply, and Han gets out a bitter laugh. 

“Of course you don’t get it. Why would you?” He murmurs, shaking his head. 

Chewbacca asks him a question and Han snorts, glancing down at his bandaged wrists. “You always this nosey?” 

Han picks at the edges of the gauze absently as he listens to Chewbacca’s reply. When Han turns and looks into his eyes he doesn’t see any pity, just true curiosity about what could have happened to him to make him this way. 

It’s refreshing, to not be pitied, really, and somehow he and Chewbacca fill the silence with conversation about anything and everything. 

And when he leaves the hospital, Chewbacca comes with him. 

\----

The fourth time Han tries to kill himself it’s in his untidy quarters aboard the Millennium Falcon, and his friends are laughing not twenty feet away outside his door. 

The blade doesn’t move fast enough, the blood doesn’t leave his arms hastily enough as he hears the unbearable sound of feet approaching his room. 

Han can’t let himself fail. Not again. He scrambles away the minute he hears the mechanical slide of the door opening, shifts away from an all-too familiar voice and fights against strong hands that are just trying to help. 

 

He doesn’t black out this time, but he’s certain he would have preferred it to Luke’s worried face, ghost-like above his as he uses the Force to staunch the bleeding and calls out to their friends, who materialize at his doorway with a gasp. 

Luke’s eyes look so familiar, exactly like the orphan’s that had laid dead at his feet so many years ago. Luke’s eyes mirror his glassy ones, still clear as glass in Han’s mind; big, blue, and scared. Han feels another terrible pang of sorrow. 

Luke says something to them, perhaps asks for help, something Han never was very good at, and they rush to his aid. 

Leia and Chewie have surprisingly steady hands, both for different reasons, but Luke’s shake across Han’s skin as he tries to help, at the very least holds Han down as he tries to pull away from their aid, tries to fight against their hold as they stop the red and cover it with white, white, white. 

By the end of it he’s too exhausted to fight, and the room buzzes with silence as they all sit there, bewildered, too afraid to ask the question Han knows is spinning in their mind. 

Luke is staring at him intently, as if all their problems could be solved by a look, and sets a now-steady hand over Han’s after a long moment of contemplation.

He understands. Han doesn’t know how, or why, but it is somehow transmitted to him without words that Luke _understands_ like nobody else ever has before. 

And if his hand grips Luke’s a little tighter, the younger man understands that, too. 

\----

The fifth and final time Han tries to kill himself, he’s too damn old and entirely, completely, _alone._

All the children of Luke’s Jedi camp are dead, and their bodies lie prone in the beds they slept in. Some of them had gotten up, had tried to fight, but they’d been no match to their attacker. 

Ben is gone. 

_His son_ is gone and while there’s no proof yet it’s growing increasingly obvious that he was the one who had committed the murders. 

Luke only serves to confirm it, a day later when he tells them what he knows with a somber expression and then disappears completely. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t say where he’ll be. He just goes.

Leia deals with it in her own way. She throws herself into her work, watches in fear as the Dark side grips hold of the galaxy for the second time in her life. 

Han, meanwhile, takes a knife to old scars and closes his eyes. Leia will be too busy to check in for a while, and all the others are too polite and pitying to come knocking. 

But after another fleeting moment, between blood slipping out of his arm and the opening of his eyes (sad and old and too similar to his son’s), he stops himself. 

His son’s darkness won’t be what kills him. He can’t give it the satisfaction, not after all he’d been through with it. 

Miserable, he bandages himself up, says goodbye to Leia, and leaves the Resistance for old habits. 

It’s not a happy ending, but it’s one he makes for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments + Kudos are greatly appreciated!


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